


Ghosts

by Ackermission



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hallucinations, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin) Has PTSD, M/M, Older Eren Yeager, Titan-Haired Eren Yeager, can be platonic, just a night at headquarters, not necessarily romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-04-06 13:33:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14058045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ackermission/pseuds/Ackermission
Summary: All he wants is to forget, because remembering hurts way too much.





	Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> This was heavily inspired by that one scene during the female titan arc, right after Squad Levi is killed and Levi tries to make Eren smile with a shitty joke.   
> Based off ereri-writing-prompts (on tumblr)'s March prompt, 'Forgetfulness'.

Levi knew they were dead.

Why else would it feel like a blunt dagger was being plunged into his heart when he could see them standing right in front of him? Because there they were. Smiling at him, asking him how they could help. Asking him why he looked so sad. Did the cleaning not happen to his expectations today?

He clenched his fingers tighter around his scalding teacup. At least the pain was a reminder that he was alive, he was real and living this cursed existence. “Humanity’s Strongest” was nothing but an empty title to him. Survival of the fittest, where the fittest had to lock away his heart and swallow the key… which he managed to fuck up.

Now he had to pay the price.

They swarmed around him, familiar and faceless alike, the hundreds of soldiers and comrades that he knew had died under his command. All talking. Always talking, asking questions. They materialized the moment he was free and stayed till he found a distraction. And even then they never really left. He could see them out of the corner of his eye, catch a fragment of ‘heichou’ by a voice which shouldn’t exist.

He hated it.

He hated himself for hating it.

His burning hand was the only thing tethering him to reality right now.

 

Somewhere out of his daze, he heard the soft scraping of a chair against the stone floor. Another one of his delusions? He doubted anyone else would come to the dining hall at who-gives-a-fuck ‘o clock when they could sleep (or do whatever they did) at this time of the night.

“Heichou, all the five rooms you asked me to clean this morning are done now!” floated Petra’s cheerful voice.

Someone was drumming their fingers on the table.

“You need to trust me, Levi.” Erwin said to his right. More voices babbled among themselves.

A boot-clad foot was tapping on the ground.

“I’m on your side!” that ex-military police kid (Marlowe?) yelled. A laugh echoed among the faceless crowd.

The tea was cooling down. It didn’t hurt anymore.

“Heichou….”

“Heichou!”

“Levi-”

“Runt…!”

“Heichou.”

“lead us…”

“Big bro?!”

They were closing in on him, cutting off all air, light, everything.

He gulped the last lungful of oxygen he could get.

“SHUT UP AND LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE! ALL OF YOU!”

His voice overpowered them all, echoing off the walls. He wondered if he’d woken anyone up but it was blissfully silent.

He didn’t know whether they really left or not, but he was able to breathe again. He looked around the room between ragged gasps, and while they were still there, they seemed… faded. Somewhere in the shadows.

There was only one left, who happened to be sitting a few seats away on the same table.

The soldier’s large teal eyes regarded him with mild apprehension and something else Levi wished he could pretend not to understand.

But as their eyes met, he knew that haunting pain only too well.

He couldn’t say for how long they sat like that, just staring expressionlessly at each other, but the shadows seemed to recede even further.

His tea was cold now.

Eren broke eye contact first, looking at the edge of the table instead. Levi took a sip out of lack of anything else to do. It tasted disgusting.

“Hey, captain.”

Levi looked at the younger man over his cup.

“The shit’s not gonna expel itself, you know.”

The raven blinked. It took him a couple of minutes to get it.

“Yours or mine, Jaeger?”

The brunet’s lips twitched. “Yours, of course. I took a big dump before coming here and-” his eyes twinkled, “ it came out alright.”

“What?”

Eren looked down, his hands shaking slightly.

“Nothing.”

Some long-forgotten memory nudged his brain. Didn’t Eren sit exactly in that position, alone with him, sometime in the past?

Didn’t Levi attempt to lighten him up with an equally terrible joke?

Some years ago…

What if this was his imagination playing tricks on him again…?

“Eren?”

“Yeah?”

He finished the stone-cold tea but continued holding the cup, staring at the younger man intently.

“…are you real?” he whispered.

Eren’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second, and then he looked down, his bangs covering his face.

Silence.

Levi didn’t dare to blink or breathe, terrified that Eren would vanish if he did.

And then the younger man pushed his chair off and got up, walked over to Levi and prised the cup out of his tight grip. Those warm but firm fingers grasped his stinging palm.

His hallucinations, no matter how real they looked, could never touch him.

He had his answer.

As he watched Eren place his cup on the table, Levi could appreciate the irony of this situation. Two people humanity wouldn’t forget, helping each other through memories they wanted to forget.

But as he tentatively wrapped his fingers around the younger man’s free hand, he realized that they didn’t scare him as much anymore.


End file.
